


Lessons In Naming Strays

by Novaviis



Series: Watercolour [15]
Category: Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: Accidental Baby Acquisition, Babysitting, Birdflash Week 2019, Child Abandonment, Domestic Fluff, Light Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-24
Updated: 2019-06-24
Packaged: 2020-05-19 05:39:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,588
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19350601
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Novaviis/pseuds/Novaviis
Summary: Dick had been in the Manor library, reluctantly going over some school work while he had the night off. No missions with the Team, and with Bruce off world with the League (a fact that Dick had not failed to bemoan with suggestions of going with him), Dick had little in the way of distractions. He had hoped his luck was turning when his phone started to buzz in his pocket, and a request for a Video Call from his Boyfriend flashed over the screen.Dick grinned, lounging back on the couch as he answered the call. “Hey Wa- what is that?”Wally West grimaced through the camera – most likely do to the infant currently climbing up his shoulder to grab a fist full of his hair. “It’s called a Baby. Maybe you’ve heard of them.”With a frown, Dick sat upright again, swinging his legs over the couch. “I’m familiar with the concept. And how the hell did you come to acquire this baby?”“Stork. Congrats, you’re the father.”“Wally.”





	Lessons In Naming Strays

**Author's Note:**

> DickWally Week 2019. Day 1: Accidental Baby Aquisition

Of all possibilities (and there were many) for how Dick Grayson had expected to spend his Friday night, standing in line at a 24hr pharmacy in the middle of Central City was not one of them. He shifted restlessly on his feet as the line inched forward. There weren’t many people in line, two ahead of him and one behind, but the cashier was genetically closer to a slug than a human being. In the basket he had clutched in one hand was  a bag of potato chips, two cans of soda, four tins of pureed food, a package of wet wipes, a bottle that proudly proclaimed being BPA free (whatever that meant), and a couple little brightly coloured toys. Tucked under his other arm was a six pack of diapers.

Needless to say, these items were not intended for his use (aside from the chips and soda).

The line moved forward. Dick sighed in relief as he hefted his items up onto the conveyor belt. He shrugged at the odd look he received from the elderly man in front of him, and simply used a divider to nudge the bottle of Gold Bond away from his pile.

It had started about an hour ago.

Dick had been in the Manor library, reluctantly going over some school work while he had the night off. No missions with the Team, and with Bruce off world with the League (a fact that Dick had not failed to bemoan with suggestions of going with him), Dick had little in the way of distractions. He had hoped his luck was turning when his phone started to buzz in his pocket, and a request for a Video Call from his Boyfriend flashed over the screen.

Dick grinned, lounging back on the couch as he answered the call. “Hey Wa- what is that?”

Wally West grimaced through the camera – most likely do to the infant currently climbing up his shoulder to grab a fist full of his hair. “It’s called a Baby. Maybe you’ve heard of them.”

With a frown, Dick sat upright again, swinging his legs over the couch. “I’m familiar with the concept. And how the hell did you come to acquire this baby?”

“Stork. Congrats, you’re the father.”

“Wally.”

The camera went shaky for a moment, and suddenly Dick was left looking at a ceiling. Just off frame, he could hear Wally grunting as he attempted to dissuade the child from its infatuation with his copper red hair. When Wally finally picked up the phone again, he had the kid in one arm, distracted with his house keys.

“Okay, that’s better,” Wally sighed as he held the phone out at arm’s length.

The baby, now that Dick could get a better look at her, was probably just about a year old. Her thin wisps of light brown hair had been pulled back into two, stubby little pigtails, combined with big blue eyes. She could have been a poster kid for Gerber. “Plan on explaining?” Dick pressed.

“We found her,” Wally replied, shifting her a bit to get more comfortable as he sat down on the couch. With the movement of the camera, Dick finally recognized the background as Barry and Iris’ place. “Barry and I were out on patrol and we found her alone in some run-down house on the rough side of town. We only went in because this girl told us someone needed help inside. When we got up there, she was alone. No crib, nothin’, just left sleeping on a mattress on the floor. Whoever’d been there before must’ve left just minutes before we got there. Barry sent me home with her while he looks for her parents, or… I guess any family that can take her.”

Dick grimaced. “Oh, shit…”

“Yeah,” Wally nodded. “Anyway, Aunt Iris is out of town, and I’m a little out of my depth here. Mind helping me out?”

“I don’t know any more than you do about babies,” Dick countered.

“But between us we’ve got to know enough to get by, right?” Wally said. “Please, babe?”

And, well, that was all it had taken. Within minutes, Dick was getting ready and heading out to Central. He brainstormed a bit with Wally before the call ended, trying to figure out what they needed – which, of course, had lead him to this pharmacy, standing in the slowest line of his life under a flickering florescent bulb that he _swore_ he could hear buzzing. Maybe he was just going crazy. He was seriously considering it by the time it was his turn at the cash register.

 

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

 

When Dick arrived, the baby was being entertained quite happily with a ring of measuring cups. Wally was sitting on the living room rug, one leg drawn up against his chest, chin in his hand, staring at the kid like he could dissect her secrets if he stared long enough. The baby, for her part, was having the time of her life just banging ¼ and ½ together and didn’t pay him any mind. Dick kicked his shows off, deposited his bags on the kitchen counter, and dropped himself onto the floor beside his boyfriend. The baby gave him a side eye as he approached, evidently wary of this newcomer. Kid had a surprising amount of attitude for someone who couldn’t wipe her own snot. Once Dick passed her a rattling elephant toy from his back pocket, however, she seemed to deem him worthy of her presence.

“So,” Dick grunted as he plopped down, “what’s her name?”

Wally also gave him a side eye (one that was honestly lack-luster in comparison to the one he’d received from the baby moments before). If anything, he just looked tired. “Gee, I didn’t think to check her collar for tags. Maybe we can find her address,” he deadpanned. “She’s not a lost _puppy_ , dude.”

Dick rewarded him for that comment with a swift throw pillow to the face. “Shut up,” Dick rolled his eyes. Wally tossed the pillow back to Dick, who caught it with infuriating ease and used it to rest on as he shifted to lay down on his chest. “I mean, you have no idea who she is yet?”

“No clue,” Wally admitted. “She was just kind of… left there. Slept through it all, didn’t even notice anyone was gone.” There was a distant glaze in his eyes as he spoke, staring at the girl with a frown.

“That’s fucked up…” Dick murmured. The kid perked up at his voice, turning toward him with her head tilted. Dick froze as she opened her mouth, looking like she was testing a word on her tongue. Wally elbowed him in the shoulder. He _really_ hoped this wasn’t going to be the moment she said her first word.

Thankfully, however, she decided against it. Letting out a delighted gurgling noise as she shoved the elephant’s ear in her mouth. Dick deflated, head drooping with a sigh. Behind him, he could hear Wally snort, and looked over his shoulder to see him smothering laughter into his hand. Dick’s eyes narrowed. He nudged him with a sock covered toe. “My _point_ was,” he sighed, “she’s got to have some name. Don’t people write their kids’ names on their clothes? Did you check the inside of her – what’s it called, a onesie?”

“Barry checked,” Wally reached out and flipped the back of her white onesie – though it could barely be called white with how grey it looked, worn in with dirt. The little yellow duck on the front looked like it was walking through an oil slick rather than a puddle. Sure enough though, when Wally turned up the back, there was nothing written there.

Dick’s brows furrowed. “Well, she needs a name. We can’t just call her…” he made a vague gesture, “y’know, ‘her’ all night. It’s undignified.”

Wally leaned back against the bottom of the couch. “Alright, first of all, she’s a baby. She doesn’t have or need dignity. And second; isn’t there a rule against naming strays?”

“She’s not a lost _puppy_ , Wally,” Dick fired right back at him. On the rug between them, the girl let out a loud squeal, rolling onto her back with the elephant’s ear thoroughly soaked with baby drool. Dick grinned, and reached out to tickle her foot. She squealed again in peals of laughter. “She is a bit of a Stray, though. Sounds like a winner.”

“Did you get your naming conventions from Conner?”

The night drew on with only one update from Barry – that there was nothing to update. They had absolutely no clue where the baby came from (no, not like _that_ , they obviously knew – never mind). No CCTV footage showing anyone going into the abandoned house with her, no missing children’s reports. So, it’d be a while longer. Barry asked how Wally was handling things, if he’d mind staying with her, and Wally reported that’d he’d enlisted back up in the form of Robin, The Teenage Wonder. They’d be fine. They currently had her occupied with Sesame Street, a statement that was confirmed with the sound of her laughing and clapping every time Big Bird came on screen.

All in all, things were going well. They had a handle on this. How hard could taking care of a baby be?

And then “Stray” started crying.

It had started out as a bit of whining and whimpering, but their attempts to distract her with Muppets and toys were soon only proving to make the situation worse. Whatever it was that she wanted, she couldn’t communicate, but it was clear that she wanted it _now_.

Wally held her against his shoulder through her wailing. He tried that “bouncy” thing he always saw people doing on TV, where they didn’t bounce so much as bob up and down and sway a bit, but again, nothing seemed to be working.

“Do you think she’s…” Dick grimaced, gesturing to her bottom.

Wally glanced between the red faced baby in his arms and his boyfriend. “…You smell her.”

“I’m not smelling her, you smell her!”

Groaning under his breath, Wally bit the bullet and lifted her up just enough to sniff at her backside. He flinched as if expecting worse, then instantly relaxed with a dramatic sigh. “Nothing.”

“That still doesn’t tell us why she’s crying,” Dick shook his head. “I dunno, maybe she’s hungry?”

“It’s worth a shot.”

Dick hurried into the kitchen, unloading the plastic bag until he found the baby food. Wally followed behind him, peering over his shoulder at the little plastic containers as he set them on the counter. With Stray still wailing in his ear, he reached out and picked one up, turning it over in his free hand. “Chicken and Apples? Turkey and Pears? Dude, these sound nasty.”

“I just grabbed the first ones I saw on the shelf,” Dick retorted. He picked out the least offensive one, Beets and Sweet Potatoes, and dug out the little plastic spoon that came with the pack. “Alright, uh… you sit down and hold her, and I’ll do the feeding?” he suggested. Given the obvious lack of a high chair, it seemed like the best option.

And it was simple enough in practice. They set up at the kitchen table, with Dick and Wally sitting facing each other and Stray sitting on Wally’s lap. She stopped crying about two bites in, once she seemed to realize that she was getting what she wanted. After that, it was just a struggle to keep her little fingers from wrapping around the spoon and yanking it away from Dick.

“No- hey, cut it out,” Dick laughed as he thwarted another valiant attempt from Stray to take matters (literally) into her own hands. “I’ve got this covered, alright Stray? You just sit back, take it easy. Enjoy this while you can, because one day, people are going to expect you to feed yourself _all the time_ , and frankly, it’s exhausting.”

Wally grinned between Stray and Dick as he watched her take a messy bite. Dick just barely caught the leftovers from the corner of her mouth with the edge of the spoon. “You done this before?”

Dick shrugged. “Bruce made me go through a Red Cross Babysitting manual once. Said it was better to be prepared, in case childcare came up for whatever reason in the field. Kinda glad he did now, but don’t tell him that.”

“But have you ever _actually_ fed a baby?”

A glob of pureed food dropped onto Wally’s jeans.

“…No. What about you?”

Wally shook his head. “I skipped the whole “middle school babysitting job” thing in favour of becoming a Superhero. Clearly I picked the wrong career path,” he snickered. “I helped my Mom watch my baby cousin Wallace a few times, but I mostly just played video games and stopped him from getting into the Tupperware.” Stray clapped her little hands together as Dick made a silly face. Wally’s smile softened. “But… I dunno, I like kids.”

There was something loaded in that admission. Dick chanced a look up at Wally, willing his heart to stop being _stupid_ when he met his gaze. “Yeah? I do too.”

Prior experience or not, Dick got Stray to eat just over half of the container before she started to fuss again. It was quieter now, more whimpers than loud, protesting wails. She almost sounded uncomfortable. Dick set the food aside and took her from Wally, holding her up to his shoulder as he began to pat her back.

“Babies can’t burp by themselves,” Dick explained, more than a little happy at the chance to show off to his boyfriend. “Their digestive systems can’t handle trapped gas on their own, so sometimes they need a little he-“

Stray barfed on him. All the way down his back. Dick wasn’t sure what expression he was wearing at that moment, but Wally sure seemed to be enjoying it. Hell, after a moment, Stray seemed to be enjoying it too. She pushed her stubby little arms on his shoulder to sit up and look back at him. The beet juice dribbling down from her chin and onto her chest only served to heighten the effect.

Dick glared at his cackling boyfriend. “Not. A. Word,” he hissed as Stray clapped.

A wardrobe change was in order for the both of them. Dick passed Stray off to Wally, muttering a hope that he would get hurled on too, before making his way into the laundry room. He stripped his soaked shirt off. It was a feat of acrobatics in itself just to avoid smearing baby vomit on himself as he peeled the Tee off, but somehow he managed. Wally poked his head through the laundry room door after a moment, holding a very naked baby in one arm. He tossed Dick her soiled onesie to be thrown in the wash with his shirt. The sound of running bathwater echoed from down the hall. With the laundry started, Dick headed back into the kitchen to clean up the aftermath of the feeding.

Down the hall, he heard Wally’s voice. Couldn’t quite tell what he was saying, but he sounded – happy. Like he was having fun. Splashes and high pitched laughter followed soon after. Dick finished up and walked down the hall to the bathroom.

Wally was sitting at the edge of the bathtub with his jeans rolled up to his knees. He’d filled the tub with only a few inches of water, and a generous helping of mildly scented bubble bath (lavender or something, probably Iris’). Stray was sitting in the water, positively _beaming_ up at Wally as he made himself a beard out of the suds. He pretended to sneeze, and blew the bubbles off his face. Clumps of them fell back into the water, on the sides of the tub, and even on her head.

This was stupid. Dick was only 16. There shouldn’t have been a pleasant longing that ached in the core of his chest as he leaned against the doorway and watched.

 

.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.-.

 

The table lamp flicked on. Dick’s heavy eyes opened slowly, adjusting to the amber glow of the light behind him. He heard footsteps, slow and tired, walking toward the back door through the kitchen. A shadow fell over him from behind. Wally walked past him, padding quietly in his socks, to answer the door.

At some point after the bath, and the wrestling to get Stray diapered and into her clean onesie, and the _one minute_ they’d turned away only to lose track of her and find her dumping a box of cheerios on the kitchen floor – well, Dick must’ve fallen asleep. It took him a moment to remember giving the baby a bottle of milk, and winding things down for the night with yet another round of Sesame Street. The TV was still playing at a low volume, the light from the screen flickering softly through the living room. There was a solid, warm weight on his chest. Stray was laying across his torso, head just under his chin. She had the trunk of the elephant toy in one little balled up fist, its damp ear half-fallen out of her mouth as she slept. A blanket he was sure hadn’t been there when he’d fallen asleep had been draped over the both of them.

“Hey, kid,” he heard Barry’s voice over the light squeaking of the back door. “How’d it go?”

“Good, good,” Wally yawned. “How’bout your end?”

There was a bit of shuffling as the back door shut again. Dick carefully peeled the blanket back, holding Stray steady as he slowly stood up and joined the Speedsters in the kitchen. Stray didn’t so much as stir. As he walked around the corner, Barry was just pushing his cowl back.

“Well… we’re pretty sure she was abandoned,” Barry began. Already, his voice was heavy. “The young woman who tipped us off… she must’ve been her mother. Teenager, in with the wrong crowd, desperate… probably trusted we’d take care of her,” he sighed. “We haven’t been able to find her to offer help, try to keep them together, but until we do, the baby’s going into the system.”

“What?” The word left Dick’s mouth before he could think to keep quiet. Stray whined at the sudden noise, turning her face in against Dick’s shoulder to try to block it out and keep sleeping.

Both Barry and Wally’s heads snapped toward him. Dick instantly felt smaller than he was, chest flushed hot under their eyes. The source of Dick’s apprehension didn’t need to be said aloud.

So, understanding of that, Barry turned toward Dick, holding his hands out to placate him. “It’s a Foster home. I know the family personally, Dick. They’re friends of mine from work. I suggested them to Social Services myself. Really good people, _honest_ people, and they’ve handled situations like this before. She’ll be in good hands.”

Dick hesitated. He’d known, obviously, that this was a one-night deal. He’d just been here to do his boyfriend a favour. This was temporary, _very_ temporary. They couldn’t keep her (could they? No. Fuck, no absolutely not, he was fucking insane for even questioning that). Feigning nonchalance, as if one twist in his expression could give those thoughts away, Dick nodded. “Alright,” he said as he carefully shifted Stray into Barry’s arms. “You might as well take this stuff with you,” he said once the warmth of her left him. Dick stepped (maybe too quickly, slow down) over to the table and began piling everything he’d gotten earlier back into the plastic bag. Barry slipped his cowl back on before taking the bag. Stray hadn’t even noticed that she’d changed hands, nuzzling into the crimson fabric of the Flash’s uniform.

“I’m sure they’ll appreciate it Dick, thank you,” Barry smiled beneath the mask. “Thank you, boys. I know you probably had more exciting plans for Friday night, but you did good.” Taking a moment to shift Stray in his arms, Barry then turned and headed out the back door.

The house was left quiet, save for the drone of Sesame Street from the living room. Dick didn’t realize he was staring at the door until Wally took his hand and tugged him along. They headed back toward the couch. Dick casually swiped the remote off the coffee table as he passed, switching the channel to some 90’s romcom he didn’t care about, before flopping back onto the cushions. “Well,” he grunted, “that’s a relief.”

“Yeah,” Wally replied. He draped himself half on top of Dick, laying across his chest and between his legs. “Sucks that it happened, her being left like that, but… y’know, it’s good that she’ll be taken care of.”

“For sure.”

“Might even be for the best.”

“Yeah. Can’t imagine it was easy for her Mom to give her up.”

“Absolutely. But she’ll be fine now.”

“Mhm.”

The two of them went quiet, staring at the TV screen without really paying attention to what was happening. “Hate to say it,” Wally began after a few minutes of silence, “but I was right about one thing.”

Dick frowned. “What was that?”

There was a long pause before Wally spoke. When he did, his voice was thick. “…should never name strays.”

No way to respond to that, honestly. Dick swallowed, finding his throat a little too tight for his liking. He reached over the back of the couch and pulled the throw blanket down over them.


End file.
